


take what you need (and be on your way)

by bellawritess



Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band), All Time Low (Band)
Genre: Based on an Oasis Song, Canon Compliant, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, I Am Sorry, Love, M/M, Melancholy, emo lashton, foreshadowing........but not really, it's actually based on three oasis songs, it's like three fics in one, this fic is hard to describe, to a certain degree anyway, what's the point of the tags helen won't read them anyway, wow! look at that tag go
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:08:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26737144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellawritess/pseuds/bellawritess
Summary: They're in love. It's different for everyone.(Or: Michael and Calum, and Luke and Ashton, and Jack and Alex, through the years.)
Relationships: Jack Barakat/Alex Gaskarth, Luke Hemmings/Ashton Irwin, Michael Clifford/Calum Hood
Comments: 10
Kudos: 36





	take what you need (and be on your way)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [softirwin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/softirwin/gifts).



> so...........happy birthday, [helen](archiveofourown.org/users/softirwin/pseuds/softirwin), sweet wonderful love of my life. i've written over 200k in fanfiction since you encouraged me to start (in may!! we've only known each other for six months!!), and still i don't have the words to tell you how much i love you, how much i treasure you, how close to my heart you are. i can't believe (i can't believe!!!!) that i'm lucky enough to love you, much less to be loved by you. i must be one of the luckiest people on the goddamn planet. i love everything you've done for me and everything you've been for me and everything you are. i love you more than songs can say. i love you more than this FIC can say but that sure as hell didn't stop me from writing it !! i don't even know how to begin thanking you for being the person that you are in my life. i acknowledge that this is a selfish birthday wish, to thank you for being someone to me, but people are selfish, so what can i do!! i hope your birthday is more wonderful than words, or at least that you feel happy and as loved and appreciated as you genuinely are, and now i need to move on because this is just the author's note but seriously. i love you
> 
> also i am so sorry for the. you know. writing angst for your birthday. i hope the fluff and malum and jalex and all will make up for it. i promise you a happy ending if that means anything <3 
> 
> title from stop crying your heart out by oasis. each section is based on a different oasis song as well, but, you know. you'll see. hope you like it, or at least don't hate it, or at least i hope it makes you smile knowing i wrote it with you in mind x

**half the world away**

**2020**

_i’ve been lost, i’ve been found (but i don’t feel down)_

“He is not hot.”

“I didn’t _say_ he’s hot, I said —”

“You called him a sexy motherfucker —”

“Which is _not_ the same!”

“So you think he’s sexy but not hot?”

“Yes, and only in his _thirties,_ oh my God, don’t put fucking words in my mouth.”

“What’s going on?” Zack asks, wandering in and seating himself very heavily on the couch beside Alex.

“Alex is making me seem like some kind of, like,” Jack says, floundering for the word, so Alex jumps in.

“Gerontophile.”

“Is that really the word? That sucks.”

“What the fuck,” Zack says, “sparked this conversation?”

Alex sighs heavily. “Oasis.”

Zack raises his eyebrows. “Like…‘Wonderwall’ Oasis?”

“Yeah,” Jack says, voice crackling briefly through the Skype call. “We were talking about lead guitarists. Hottest lead guitarists.”

“How the fuck did you get from that to Oasis?” 

“Jack threatened to leave the band and make his own solo career,” Alex explains. “Like Noel Gallagher, from Oasis. And I said he’s too sexy to be successful on his own. Jack, I mean.”

“True,” Zack says, nodding.

“And then Jack called Noel Gallagher a sexy motherfucker,” Alex says grimly. “And now I’m contemplating breaking up with him.”

“You’re such a shithead,” Jack says. “Just because you don’t want to admit that he was hot.”

“So you _do_ think he’s hot!”

“ _Yes_ , when he was _thirty_ ,” Jack repeats emphatically. Alex shakes his head.

“I can’t fucking believe this,” he says. “I’m suddenly very offended. You think he’s hot, and you think I’m hot. Where — what — I just don’t get it. I don’t understand.”

“Let me see a picture,” Zack says. 

“You’re just gonna side with Jack,” Alex grumbles, pulling up the picture from their chat that Jack had sent in his initial defense. Zack always sides with Jack. They’re annoyingly cute like that. 

Zack peers at the screen while Alex and Jack wait with bated breath. Finally, he nods his approval. “Okay. I see it.”

“ _Thank_ you!”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Alex scowls.

“He has nice, like, eyelashes,” Zack says.

“You think that eyelashes _alone_ can make up for,” Alex gestures around the screen at the photo, “everything else about him?”

“Kind of, yeah.”

“I get it,” Jack says. “We’re just so much more open-minded than you, Alex. It’s fine. I’m breaking up with you. Gonna have an affair with Zack instead. _And_ Rian. I bet he’d agree with us.”

“Rian _definitely_ won’t,” Alex says, because if there’s one thing he can count on it’s Rian having decent taste in men. “You’d probably have better luck with, like, some British singer.”

“ _You_ are a British singer,” Jack says petulantly.

Well. That’s true. “A more British one,” Alex amends. “Alex Turner.”

“Louis Tomlinson,” Jack says. “Didn’t he say something about Oasis and his new album? And, uh, stuff?”

“I don’t know,” Alex says, because he doesn’t. “I don’t exactly have his number.” 

“You don’t?”

Alex frowns. “Why the fuck would I have Louis Tomlinson’s number?”

“I don’t know,” Jack says breezily. “You pull.”

“You think I _pulled_ Louis Tomlinson?”

“I have Harry Styles’s number,” Zack says, out of absolutely nowhere. Alex rounds on him while Jack exclaims, “What the fuck, seriously?” 

“ _How?_ ”

Zack shrugs. “Uh, I don’t really remember. Friend of a friend or something like that. It’s probably not his number anymore. I’ve never called it or anything.”

“Have you considered the possibility that it’s not actually Harry Styles’s number?” Jack suggests dryly.

Zack shrugs again. “We’ll never know, I guess.” Then he stands up, like he hasn’t just dropped that ridiculous bombshell, and says, “Well, this has been weird, as usual. Jack, I’ll call you later?”

“You better,” Jack says, grinning easily. Zack waves at him, then nods at Alex, then retreats to his room. Possibly to go call Harry Styles.

“I swear to you,” says Jack, once the door closes behind Zack, “I’ve known that kid for, what, seventeen years now? And I have never once understood what it’s like inside his head.”

“I think the contents would kill us both on impact,” Alex says seriously. Jack laughs. Alex’s heart hurts. He misses Jack, suddenly and violently. Jack is in Los Angeles, and Alex is in Baltimore, and quarantine rules say that means Jack and Alex can’t be together. Zack had been in Baltimore already, and they’d both been kind of lonely, so Zack had offered to move in on a temporary basis, until quarantine lifts. It’s nice to have him around, and he’s useful for farm stuff, but Alex misses Jack. He misses late wakeups and warm bed sheets and lazy kisses and casual touches and everything that Jack is.

He’s never understood his 25-year-old self more than he does now. _God, I’m sick of sleeping alone,_ indeed.

“So things are going smoothly with Zack there?” Jack asks. Alex stares at him through the shitty Skype screen and feels a crushing mix of longing and love and sadness. There should be a word for this. There should be a song for this. There should be a million.

(There are, and there have been. Alex has written enough of them himself. But the lyrics fall flat compared to the real feeling, the happy-sad sensation of being so in love with someone who’s a million miles away. It hurts so much. Alex wouldn’t trade it for the world.)

“Yeah,” he says, and then, “I miss you so much,” because the words are threatening to explode out of his chest unless he says them. Jack’s face immediately twists, turns more solemn.

“I miss you too,” he says wistfully. “If I hated L.A. before, it’s nothing compared to now. At least with you I had someone to jam with in traffic. Now it just...sucks.”

“Yeah,” Alex says, because that’s just it, isn’t it? In the end, it’s not even the sex or the kissing or the touches that Alex misses the most. It’s just the ability to sit and exist with Jack, to be alone together, to co-exist peacefully. To sit in a room and be in love, and for that to be enough. “Fuck. This sucks.”

“Yeah,” Jack says morosely. “It does.”

They both sit in glum silence for a minute. Alex sighs and leans back against the couch cushions, adjusting his laptop on his lap. The fan is making desperate noises, and Alex should probably get a book or something to set it on, because he knows it’s not good for a computer to be sitting on a uneven surface for this long, but whatever. It’s not going to break, and Alex doesn’t want to stop looking at Jack, even for a second. 

“I miss you,” he says again, even though he already did, and Jack smiles a little sadly, laughs a little unhappily. 

“I know,” he says. “You mentioned.”

“Well, I miss you more now than I did the first time I said it.”

It doesn’t really make sense, but Jack nods like it does. “Me too.”

“Please come here soon,” Alex says. He tries to make it sound like a joke, but he can feel the way his voice is threatening to crack down the middle, to snap like a glow stick and spill out all of the hurt he’s feeling, all of the loneliness that threatens him every night, or else pins him to his bed in the morning, curled up with a pillow that’s far too soft and cool to impersonate Jack, who’s all sharp angles and warm skin.

“I will,” Jack promises. And maybe Alex is just feeling sad and poetic, but there’s warmth in Jack’s voice, the kind that drapes itself lovingly over Alex’s shoulders, wraps him in a hug, kisses his forehead. “Shit, if I’d known it would make you beg I would’ve gone into quarantine way sooner.” 

“Fuck you,” Alex says without heat. He cracks a smile without meaning to, heart feeling lighter already. Jack has that effect on him. On everyone, really, but it’s only when it works on Alex that Jack bites back this silly grin, like it’s exactly the result he’d been hoping for.

“I’m hoping you will,” he says. “But I’ll just have to dream about it for now.”

Alex hums, chuckling. “Are we having the same dream?”

“Probably not. Unless yours involves Rian and —”

“ _Jesus,_ Jack.”

Jack barks a laugh. “I’m totally fucking kidding, but oh my God can you _imagine._ Should I tell Rian I have sex dreams about him just to see his reaction? I’m totally gonna do that.”

“He’d probably try to get us couples’ therapy,” Alex snickers.

Jack snorts. “He _would!_ He so would. I’m gonna text him right now.”

This is Alex’s stupid boyfriend and his stupid antics and his stupid bad jokes. Alex wishes he could reach through the screen and just grab Jack’s hand. At this point, for the promise of touching Jack, even for a moment, Alex would do anything. Anything at all.

“We,” he says decisively, “are going to have mind-blowing reunion sex.”

“Oh, no doubt,” Jack says, and grins, far too bright and innocent for someone who’s having a conversation about sex. “It’s gonna be awesome.”

“Zack can sleep in the stables.”

Jack doubles over at that mental image, and his laughter makes Alex laugh, and after a moment the audio of the call is crackling furiously from Jack howling, and Alex would break his speakers just to hear that sound forever.

(The first day they see each other, they don’t end up having sex. They kiss, and Alex feels like he’s being put back together, and before he knows it he’s got tears in his eyes, and when he pulls away Jack has tears in his eyes, and they both laugh while crying, and fall asleep in Alex’s bed, holding each other so close it’s hard to tell if they’re actually separate people anymore. And Alex knows he’s in love, because if all he could have for the rest of his life was this, just this with Jack, falling asleep next to him, he’d take it in a heartbeat and never regret anything.)

**talk tonight**

**2017**

_you and me see how we are_

Ashton leaves a dinner plate in the oven and goes to knock on Luke’s door.

“Dinner,” he says, unnecessarily. Luke knows it’s dinnertime. If he’d wanted to eat, he’d have come out and done it. But Ashton let him have his day to wallow yesterday, and Luke’s got to eat at some point.

(It’s not that Ashton’s been watching the kitchen, counting the slices of bread in the loaf to see if anyone’s made toast in his absence. It’s _not._ But he can tell, the way he can sometimes tell Luke’s going to crash before he even does, that Luke’s not left his room since last night. Ashton knows he keeps chocolate in his bottom drawer, but that’s not enough to sustain a grown man, and they both know it.)

There’s no reply. Ashton knocks again. “Luke. You need to eat.”

Again, nothing. Fear, visceral and messy, crawls up Ashton’s throat and curls up familiarly in his gut. Luke’s fine. Of course Luke is fine; he’s bad sometimes but never _that_ bad, and they have an agreement, and he wouldn’t just — he’s fine, has to be fine, but Ashton is still scared, anyway, always. Always just a little bit afraid that — that — 

He pushes the door open. Luke is on the floor, staring up at the ceiling, chest rising and falling with every breath.

Ashton sighs in relief. “Luke. Can you at least say something when I knock? Please?”

Luke cuts his eyes over to Ashton, looming above him. Somewhere in the expressionlessness of his face, Ashton sees a glimmer of regret.

“Sorry,” he mumbles. “I’m fine. Just not hungry.”

“Yeah,” Ashton says, trying not to sound too curt. “Well, you have to eat anyway.”

“I’m fine,” Luke repeats.

“You’re not,” Ashton says, and Luke closes his eyes, as if by removing Ashton from his line of sight, he can stop Ashton worrying. “But I don’t care if you sulk. I just care that you eat.”

“I’m not —”

“I don’t care.” Ashton crouches. “You can eat alone, or I can join you. You know I understand how you feel, but whether you feel like it or not, you need food.”

Luke scowls, and somehow maintains the blank look while he does. “Fuck you,” he says, but it’s too tired to be angry, more directed at himself than at Ashton. “Give me a minute.”

Ashton drops a hand onto Luke’s shoulder and squeezes lightly. “Take your time,” he says softly. “I’ll be in the kitchen.”

Luke exhales, tilting his head towards Ashton’s hand, and for a moment Ashton contemplates just staying there, fingers bracing Luke’s neck, some kind of Renaissance tableau come to life; he almost wants the moment to be framed, to be painted into immortality. There’s something so very _them_ about the helplessness of it all. Something inevitable.

That’s the despondency talking, though. And Ashton has a little bit more optimism than that. He stands up and goes back to the kitchen table, sliding on his reading glasses and opening his book.

He’s only gotten through three pages when Luke finally comes to the table. “Plate’s in the oven,” Ashton says kindly, so Luke retrieves it and takes his seat across from Ashton. Ashton sets his book to the side, leaning back in his chair. For a few minutes, they both sit, drenched in a quiet that feels almost unbreakable. Luke plays moodily with his food. 

Finally, with Ashton drumming his fingers against his thigh, Luke takes a bite. “Thanks,” he mumbles around it, and then swallows. “Thanks.”

“Yeah,” Ashton says. “‘Course.” He hesitates. “You wanna talk about it?”

Luke shakes his head, then aborts the motion and instead shrugs. “I don’t know. It just hit me how far from home we are. How we’re just…alone, here. And we’re, like, a million miles from home, and we’ll probably always be.”

Ashton chews on his bottom lip. “I don’t know about _always._ ”

“And how many times I’ve almost, like, completely lost my way,” Luke continues, apparently ignoring Ashton. “How easy it would be for me to — you know.”

“Luke.”

“No, I know, I’m not, like, going to,” Luke says, far too dismissively for talking about what they’re talking about, or skirting around what they’re skirting around.

“That’s a really hopeless way of looking at things,” Ashton says carefully. “I — I don’t think we’re alone. I’ve never felt alone with you.” He shouldn’t ask, really really shouldn’t, but it spills out anyway: “Do you feel alone here?”

Luke’s gaze snaps up to meet Ashton’s, and his expression is pure guilt. “No,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry, that’s not what I meant at all. Not with you, I don’t. Never when I’m with you. I just…”

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me,” Ashton says. He feels awful for even asking in the first place. It’s Luke’s right to feel alone, and it’s not like he can control it if he does. “I wish — I want to help. I just don’t know what to do.”

“I promise that you already do everything you possibly could,” Luke sighs. “It’s not you, Ashton. It’s just — this. I don’t know. Most of the time it doesn’t get to me.”

“It got to you pretty bad this time,” Ashton points out, quiet, delicate. “I haven’t seen you since yesterday, and we live together.”

“I know. I know.”

“It’s okay,” Ashton lies, because it’s not okay, but it’s not like knowing he shouldn’t feel alone will make Luke suddenly feel less alone. “I didn’t mean to —”

“You’re always so careful,” Luke murmurs. Ashton skids to a stop, mid-sentence. “You’re so careful with me. Like you think I’m going to break.”

“I don’t think you’re going to break.”

“I wouldn’t blame you if you did.”

“I don’t,” Ashton says firmly. “I just don’t see any point in being harsh for no reason. And you’re careful with me, too.”

“Not like you are.” 

“I basically bullied you out of your room to eat,” Ashton says. “That’s not really careful.”

Luke inclines his head. For a few minutes he says nothing, just eats the rest of his dinner. Ashton wonders if the matter is closed, but he suspects it isn’t.

Sure enough, Luke lays his knife and fork diagonally across his empty plate, leans back in his chair, eyes Ashton almost critically, and says, “Do you want me to stop bringing it up?”

“Bringing what up?”

“That you saved my life.”

Ashton swallows thickly. “I don’t care one way or the other,” he says. “You saved mine, too. Do you want me not to bring that up?”

Luke stares at him. Slowly he shakes his head. “I think it’s okay,” he says. “It’s okay with me, anyway. It’s, um, good to feel…needed.”

“Jesus Christ, Luke.”

“That sounded worse than I meant it,” Luke mutters. “I just — I don’t know. I think it’s good. That we saved each other. Even if that’s — if we’re not going to be perfect anyway, we might as well be perfectly matched.”

Ashton turns this over in his mind, dissecting it until it makes sense. “Yeah. Okay.”

“I usually feel alone,” Luke blurts out, like he hadn’t meant to, but when Ashton frowns, Luke doesn’t take it back. “I just — I wish I didn’t, but there’s nothing I can do about it. But I don’t feel lonely with you. That’s — that’s what I meant. And if I’m going to feel alone no matter what, I’d rather be with you. I’d always rather be with you.”

Ashton reaches across the table, palm flipped upward, and before he can equivocate on the motion, Luke slips his hand in Ashton’s, interlacing their fingers and giving Ashton a tentative smile. Ashton returns it with a tentative smile of his own. It’s not perfect, far from it, but it’s perfect for them. It’s as perfect as it can get with two people as fucked up as Luke and Ashton, but a broken perfect is better than nothing at all.

**don’t look back in anger**

**2012**

_so i start a revolution from my bed_

It’s when Calum shoves Michael off the bed that they call a truce. Michael suggests it with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, like he absolutely intends to dishonor the truce and get back at Calum later, most probably while Calum is asleep, but whatever. Calum can always, like, fill his bed with uncooked rice or something. (Cooked rice would be just a little bit too cruel.)

“That hurt,” Michael complains several minutes later, when they’re just cuddling. 

“Shut up,” Calum says. “You started that. You have no right to bitch.”

“Never stopped me before, has it?”

“I really can’t stand you.”

“You love me.”

“Not even a little bit. Not even, like, the smallest amount.”

“Liar,” Michael sings. “You love me. You’ve already told me, _and_ you said it in my voicemail once, so I have blackmail.”

Calum scowls. He’d forgotten about the voicemail that he’d half-accidentally, half-out of habit ended with _love you!_ “All the more reason to hate you. You’re planning to blackmail me.”

“Obviously I’m planning to blackmail you,” says Michael. “This is all just a long con, anyway.”

“What the fuck could your end goal _possibly_ be?” Calum wonders.

Michael grins, flips over and presses a kiss to Calum’s jaw before shoving his nose into Calum’s neck. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“I would, yeah.”

“Well, Mali, for starters —”

“I will kick you out of my house, I swear down I will.” 

Michael chortles. “I’m _joking,_ God. Take a joke.”

“The ice you’re on right now,” Calum says, “is so thin that if you _breathe_ wrong it will break.”

Michael giggles. Calum shifts, because Michael’s new position is uncomfortable unless Calum moves, but he doesn’t mind. For all his bitching, and pretending, and teasing, he really does love Michael. Maybe it’s going to be his downfall, but whatever. He’ll go down in love, and that’s better than going down alone.

“Band practice tomorrow,” Michael murmurs, breath hot against the juncture where Calum’s neck meets his shoulder.

Calum hums. They both already knew about that, but Calum keeps quiet, because this tone of voice usually means that Michael has something more to say.

“I wonder if,” Michael says, and then trails off. Calum is about to open his mouth — _you wonder if what?_ — when Michael picks back up. “If we’re actually going to be anyone. Do anything. Go anywhere.”

Michael’s brought this up before, but usually at band practice when it’s all four of them, and generally it’s to either rile Luke up or to get easy reassurance, Ashton’s patented confident smile and _yeah, ‘course we will,_ something to remind Michael why they’re having band practice at all. Now, though, is different; Michael’s looking for an answer. Or, at the very least, a conversation. The truth.

“We kind of already have,” Calum points out, nervously skirting the actual question. He doesn’t really know, is the thing, and he doesn’t want to give Michael false hope, but he also doesn’t want to crush Michael’s spirit. Michael is volatile like that; he’ll throw himself so passionately into anything, and then cut himself out of it with just the same vehemence.

Michael huffs. “We haven’t. We’ve played, like, three shows.” 

“Sold-out shows,” Calum says. “People queued. And then people wanted to meet us afterward. They don’t just do that to any normal band.”

“Yeah, but that was _small,_ ” Michael says. It had been around five hundred people, two nights, and they’ve got two more scheduled somewhere else that are also both sold out, but Calum understands what Michael means. Starting small makes it easy to stay small, but once you start skyrocketing, it’s all about speed. Michael is impatient.

“It was five hundred people,” Calum says. “Just because it’s not Madison Square Garden doesn’t mean it’s not big. Five hundred is mad compared to the Annandale.”

“You know what I mean,” Michael says. 

“And you know what _I_ mean,” Calum volleys. “You just need to be patient, Michael.”

“I don’t want to be patient,” Michael whines. “I want to be super rich and famous _right now._ ” He’s obviously joking, at least a little bit, but there’s also some truth buried in there. 

“Don’t be so shallow,” Calum says, even though he also wants it, so so so much. So much that the thought of failing now feels like being excavated. “Either we’ll make it or we don’t. If we’re good enough, and lucky enough, we will. All we can do for now is keep writing music and promoting ourselves and playing our shows.”

“Do you really think that?”

“Obviously, or I wouldn’t have told you it,” Calum says. “But don’t measure your happiness by the band.”

“I’m not, I’m not,” Michael grumbles. “I just —” He breaks off, looks up at Calum, doe-eyed, and Calum looks down at him with some difficulty, straining his eyesight to catch the green of Michael’s eyes, gleaming with the sunlight peeking through the window. “I just really want it,” Michael admits quietly. 

Calum really wants it, too, but he’s not brave enough to say it aloud yet. He thinks that if he says it, and then they come to nothing anyway, he might just fall apart completely. “I know,” he says. “We’re doing all we can, and we’re getting somewhere. Gaining momentum. As long as we don’t royally fuck up and lose that, we’ll be okay. We will, Mikey.”

Michael gnaws on his lower lip and shuffles up in Calum’s bed until they’re both sitting side-by-side. “Okay,” he says. “I believe you.”

“You should. I’m always right.”

Michael shakes his head, smiling. “You’re such a fucking arse. I’m being _vulnerable_ here.”

“Well, stop,” Calum says, curling the front of Michael’s shirt in one hand and pulling him close. “Take that look off your face. Everything is going to be okay. We’re going to be a smash hit, and we’ll tour with All Time Low, and we’ll get matching 5SOS tattoos and have a sex scandal and break world records and go platinum and girls will go crazy for us.” 

Michael inhales sharply, and leans in to kiss Calum before Calum can say anything more, which is for the best because Calum can’t really come up with any other milestones for big bands and he’d been about to kiss Michael anyway. 

In sixteen years, and among a fair few kisses (including, very unfortunately, their other two bandmates), Calum’s never enjoyed kissing someone as much as Michael, never felt as good doing it, never felt so _right_. He's always known that he and Michael are made for each other, and it's gratifying to learn that includes the ease with which their mouths move in sync, the natural familiarity of Michael’s lips on his, arms looping around Calum’s neck and hands coming to rest there.

“I don’t want girls to go crazy for us,” Michael breathes, warm in the space between their mouths. “I don’t need girls. Don’t want girls. Just you.”

Calum smiles and pulls Michael in for another kiss instead of saying _me too_. It’s obvious, and he doesn’t need to say it. Michael knows.

Outside, a warm breeze blows through the lawn, bearing promise, sweet and infinite. The sun shines its approval down on the Hood house, and along the path, flowers are just starting to grow again, as if encouraging Calum and Michael to do the same. Summertime’s in bloom, and this is only the beginning.

**Author's Note:**

> i love you!!! to whoever's reading this. but also, specifically, [helen](archiveofourown.org/users/softirwin/pseuds/softirwin). also if you read this fic and have not heard of helen, i cannot stress enough how much of a good writer she is, and i beg you leave this fic right now and go read all of hers. xoxoxoxoxo as for ME you can find me on tumblr [@clumsyclifford](http://clumsyclifford.tumblr.com/) where i will happily discuss anything and everything, basically. hope everyone's doing well, love you all, byeeee


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